Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
BALLOTS, BABIES, AND BANNERS OF PEACE INSTRUCTOR’S GUIDE Winner of the 2013 National Jewish Book Award, Women’s Studies Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace explores the social and political activism of American Jewish women from approximately 1890 to the beginnings of World War II. Written in an engaging style, the book demon- strates that no history of the birth control, suffrage, or peace movements in the United States is complete without analyzing the im- pact of Jewish women’s presence. The volume is based on years of extensive primary source research in more than a dozen archives and among hundreds of primary sources, many of which have previously never been seen. Volu- minous personal papers and institutional re- cords paint a vivid picture of a world in which both middle-class and working-class American Jewish women were consistently and pub- licly engaged in all the major issues of their day and worked closely with their non-Jewish counterparts on behalf of activist causes. This extraordinarily well researched volume makes a unique contribution to the study of modern women’s history, modern Jewish his- tory, and the history of American social move- ments. 301 PAGES PAPER • 978-1-4798-5059-4 WWW . NYUPRESS . ORG NYU PRESS U.S History, Women’s Studies, and Jewish Studies: Teaching Guide For students of U.S. History, Women’s Studies, and Jewish Studies, Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace provides a fresh look at women’s critical social and political activism during the first half of the twentieth century. Through an engaging and accessible narrative focused on Jewish women’s participation in the suffrage, birth control, and peace movements, readers will gain a deeper un- derstanding of the interplay of gender, religious, ethnic, and national identities. They will see how important a role Jewish women activists played in shaping not only the American Jewish community during a tumultuous period of immigration and consolidation but also in first-wave feminism. The narrative also conveys the ways in which anti-Semitism both at home and abroad shaped Jewish wom- en’s activist experiences. The deeply researched book paints a vivid picture of a world in which both middle-class and working-class American Jewish women were consistently and publicly engaged in all of the major issues of their day and worked closely with their non-Jewish counterparts on behalf of activist causes. CONTENTS • Chapter Summaries with Discussion Questions • Questions for Reflection • Supplementary Assignments 2 NYU PRESS INSTRUCTOR’S GUIDE INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION pages 1-17 Opening with a biographical vignette about a Jewish women heavily involved in activities both inside the Jewish community and outside it, the introduction notes the great reform energy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen- turies. American Jewish women, whether native-born or immigrant, found that involvement in activist movements provided a path toward acculturation. Al- though they were secular movements, the suffrage, birth control, and peace movements formed a cluster of feminist activity that appealed greatly to large numbers of American Jewish women. A broadly conceived focus on mater- nalism as a rationale for women’s activism allowed Jewish women to join these movements despite shadows of anti-Semitism, since motherhood was a value shared by American women across all kinds of class, ethnic, racial, religious, and national boundaries. American Jewish women activists have been absent from the literature on both first-wave American feminism and American Jewish history. Exploring their participation in the suffrage, birth control, and peace movements restores them to their rightful place and deepens our understanding of the com- plex process by which women fought for full citizenship in the United States. The introduction serves as a foundation for the themes of the book, which include: • The relationship of feminist causes such as suffrage, birth control, and peace to each other • The ongoing feminist activism during the decades following the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment • The greater diversity within the women’s movement than has typically been acknowledged • The relationship between the development of the American Jewish community and the larger women’s movement • The ability of the women’s movement to alter relations of power and to connect the personal and the political • The tensions American Jews, liked all ethnic groups, faced in balancing the benefits of acculturation with the preservation of their heritage • The importance of thinking broadly about Jewish identity and identification in the lives of historical actors • The persistence of anti-Semitism in even the most progressive social movements • The simultaneous emergence of both Jews and women as political actors and citizens during the first half of the twentieth century The introduction also places the book in the context of scholarship in the history of feminism, American Jewish history, American ethnic history, religious studies, and women’s and gender studies. Almost none of the extensive archival material at the core of the book has ever been examined by scholars before. BALLOTS, BABIES, AND BANNERS OF PEACE 3 “We Jewish Women Should be Especially Interested in Our New Citizenship”: American Jewish Women and the Suffrage Movement (pages 18-67) SUMMARY This chapter begins with a brief history of the suffrage movement in the United States and then explores multiple facets of American Jewish women’s involve- ment as individuals and members of both non-sectarian suffrage groups and Jewish women’s groups committed to enfranchisement. Jewish women played significant roles in a variety of suffrage campaigns from approximately 1890 through 1920. Though there was some ambivalence toward suffrage, exacer- CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 1 bated by various expressions of anti-Semitism in the movement, in general the American Jewish community supported women’s right to vote. This support was evident in everything from voting patterns to rabbis’ sermons to favorable cover- age of the issue by the American Jewish press. Middle-class and working-class Jewish women found in suffrage a cause that could help bridge the gap between them, though important political differences persisted. In the aftermath of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, American Jewish women demanded more of a voice in their communal institutions such as synagogues and looked forward to continuing to exert their influence on the world around them. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION ➥ What were the multiple ways in which Jewish women participated in the suffrage movement? ➥ In what ways did the American Jewish community support women’s right to vote? ➥ How did anti-Semitism affect Jewish women’s attitudes toward suffrage? What does this reveal about the social and religious limits of the past? Are there any present-day comparable situations? ➥ How did the diversity among Jewish women affect their experiences in the suffrage movement? ➥ What impact did women’s enfranchisement have on the American Jewish community? ILLUSTRATIONS • Maud Nathan (Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives) • Annie Nathan Meyer (Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives) • Gretrude Weil at a suffrage demonstration (North Carolina Office of Archives and History) 4 NYU PRESS INSTRUCTOR’S GUIDE CHAPTER 2 “I Started to Get Smart, Not to Have So Many Children”: The American Jewish Community and the Early Years of the Birth Control Movement (pages 68-102) SUMMARY The desire to control the timing and spacing of childbirth is an ancient one, but the birth control movement per se took off during the early twentieth century as new technologies like diaphragms moved that control into women’s hands and became part of a highly politicized debate. This chapter investigates the early history of the birth control movement and the critical role Jewish women played in it, especially as “early adopters” and as activists fighting against the criminal- ization of many aspects of birth control and the classification of contraception as obscenity. The radical roots of the birth control movement in the United States meant that a substantial number of politically progressive Jewish women learned about contraception and adopted it early on as a means of personal autonomy and upward mobility. As contraception became somewhat more accessible to larger numbers of Jewish women, the American Jewish community conducted an extensive debate over birth control, eventually resolving in its favor, though pockets of resistance remained and found expression in cultural productions. Jewish women accustomed to politicizing domestic matters such as kosher meat consumption found that Judaism, which traditionally both celebrated and reg- ulated (married) sexuality, proved fertile ground for birth control adoption and activism within the American Jewish community. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION ➥ What connections were there between the suffrage and birth control movements? ➥ How did the radical roots of the birth control movement affect its reception within the American Jewish community? ➥ What impact did the birth control movement have on American Jewish culture and vice versa? ➥ In what ways did Jewish women participate in the early birth control movement? ➥ How and why did so many Jewish women gravitate toward the birth control movement when traditional Jewish culture emphasized the importance of motherhood? ILLUSTRATIONS • Rose Heiman Halpern and her six children greet Margaret Sanger